© Copyright – 2014 – Athletics Illustrated
Ron Clarke is one of the greatest Australian athletes of all-time. The case can be made that he is also one of the greatest distance runners that the world has seen; a fact made no more poignant than by the infamous and gracious Olympic gold medal offering by the legendary Emil Zatopek of the former Czechoslovakia. Zatopek felt Clarke quite simply deserved it and slipped him the medal during a visit after the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
Clarke comes from a family of high-calibre athletes, primarily Australian Football talent, including his own early competitive career in the game.
Clarke earned 19 world records in various distances from the two and three mile events to the 10,000 metres. Three times in 1965 he improved the world 5,000 metre record. He was the first person to run faster than 13 minutes for the three mile race with his stellar 12:52.4 result that he accomplished on July 10th 1965 in White City, UK. He is the first to run 10,000 metres under the 28 minute benchmark; a time that is perhaps not as poetic as a sub-4 minute mile as Roger Bannister demonstrated however; just as impressive as it was an improvement by more than a half a minute over the previous record.
